Opinion

How pornography affects your work

By James Adonis

October 11, 2019 — 12.00am

One of the people I most enjoy following on Twitter is Stormy Daniels, the porn star made famous by her dalliance with Donald Trump. She often entertains her followers by reposting the many abusive tweets she receives with witty and intelligent retorts. One of the most recent was a troll who wrote: "Who cares about you and your disgusting job and life. You’re a disgrace." – to which Daniels responded: "I guess no one but my million followers. I’ll just cry myself to sleep now. Hahaha."

Stormy Daniels during an appearance on "Saturday Night Live" in New York.Credit:Will Heath

Implied within her reply is the reality she might have a million fans herself but there are millions upon millions more devouring pornography on a regular basis, many of them in Australia. The question becomes: What effect does this have on people’s lives? And, in the context of this column’s weekly theme, the effect on people’s work. Particularly when it’s viewed at their place of work.

There have been polls, for example, that reveal a majority of porn is viewed during business hours; that porn sites are visited with greater frequency than Amazon, Netflix and Twitter combined; and that online searches for pornography comprise 13 per cent of all internet traffic.

Those statistics are just a few that American scholars have used as a springboard for their own research, which is due to be published soon in the Journal of Business Ethics. Their study comprised a survey as well as an experiment.

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Their survey, of more than 1000 people, found unethical workplace behaviour (such as lying to attain a financial benefit) is much more common among those who view pornography frequently. This is especially the case with men, young adults, progressives, atheists, the wealthy, the employed and the uneducated in comparison to women, older folk, conservatives, the poor, the unemployed, the educated and religious, all of whom watch porn rarely or not at all.

Watching porn, by the way, isn’t just about videos. Included in the definition are magazines, images and books – any type of material that exposes individuals either in the nude or having sex.

Employees who view pornography at work and who are then faced with ethical decisions are more likely to act unethically.

Nathan Mecham, Melissa Lewis-Western and David Wood, Brigham Young University

The experiment, which was led by Nathan Mecham and his professorial colleagues, asked nearly 200 participants to recount, in detail, a recent time they consumed pornography. They then observed those participants in an activity-based simulation along with others who hadn’t consumed any pornography. They discovered patrons of porn shirked their responsibilities 21 per cent of the time as opposed to the rest who only did so at a rate of 8 per cent.

So why such a sizable and significant effect? According to a deeper analysis of the findings, it’s because pornography leads users to dehumanise others. Dehumanisation is when a person views colleagues as objects rather than as sentient human beings.

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The scholars write "this implies employees who view pornography at work and who are then faced with ethical decisions are more likely to act unethically". They go on to say that, since "pornography consumption causes dehumanisation of others, the incidence of sexual harassment or hostile work environments is likely to increase" in addition to other undesirable acts such as fraud, conflict, aggression and corporate scandals.